Laying the Groundwork

First, you started your business all wrong. That is, if you did it like most people who start up their own business go about it, me included. We all do a job, or make something, and then have the bright idea to open our own business and hopefully the business will provide us enough or more income so, at some point, we can do what we want. I'm telling you now, that's all screwed up.

A New Mantra

What we should have done is figure out what we want our lives to be like in 5-7 years. If you haven't dreamed this dream, I encourage you to do it. It's really easy. If you are married, then you and your spouse should do it together. My wife and I did this and, I have to say, it felt really good and I felt closer to her afterwards. So, what do you do? You turn off the television, radio, computers, and close your eyes. Then you begin to describe a day, a week,a month or so in your future life. Be extremely detailed, just like when reading a novel the more detailed the descriptions the better you can picture it in your head. Once you have done this, I encourage you to put it to paper. Write down your future life. This will be your dream contract - what it is you have agreed to achieve for yourself. Why make it a contract? Well, you enter into contracts with your customers, aren't you just as important? Of course you are. So make a contract with yourself to work to your dream?

How Your Business Life Fits Into This

Once you have your dream contract with your future self, you need to develop a way to achieve it. You see, most entrepreneurs are great at doing the work, but suck at doing life. This is because we need to turn the problem around. Your life isn't to serve your business - your business needs to serve your life - your future life! So we need to build a business which has as it's purpose to serve our life.  A business isn't the work, or the product. Rather, it is a set of systems developed to provide the work or product to the customers of the business.

Systems Are The Key

Since entrepreneurs are really good at the work, we tend to skip the process of documenting our work and processes. This is the source of big troubles. Think about it. If your process is to contact you and you'll take care of it, how can you be free to live your dream contract? You need a system and documented processes in order to bring in someone else to do the work. The system does the work or makes the product, you manage and perfect the system. A well-documented process and set of systems also means that you don't need to have the expense of hiring expensive staff with incredible resume's. Instead, you can hire people who will follow your system and processes. The key is that your processes and systems are developed by you. When you do the work, you document everything you do. When it's time to bring on someone to do that task, the job is so well defined that anyone can do it!

Everyone Must Live By the System

Everyone, including you, must live by the system and processes. When you skip or bypass the system, then people in the organization will see that the system doesn't have to be followed and will slowly put it aside. Remember, you perfected your system to eliminate errors, defects, problems and you don't want to reintroduce them. When the owner starts violating his own rules, really bad things will start to happen.

It's Not That Hard

Recently, I reworked my installation process for new school districts. My goal was to eliminate wasted effort and get an install that would result in the ability to install our software and setup our hosted environment for even a large school district in a few hours including installing website templates and subdomains - the works! I spent an entire day writing, revising, and testing the process. The results were that my process can be performed by someone with almost no technical background and completed in an hour. The resulting account is completely configured and ready to use for 20+ schools in the district. Now I can turn that job over to my assistant. My own dream contract is closer to getting fulfilled.

Some credits

If you haven't read E-Myth revisited, you should pick it up. It is an amazing book that opened my eyes up to the whole concept of my business existing to serving my future life.